


at winter's end

by Shinybug



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: First Kiss, Hopeful Ending, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28474185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinybug/pseuds/Shinybug
Summary: Geralt doesn't celebrate the New Year.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 36
Kudos: 113





	at winter's end

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one shot, barely edited, while waiting for midnight. It's the shortest thing I've ever written, and no one has sex, but I think I like it anyway.
> 
> I hope the coming year brings better and brighter things for each and every one of you.

Geralt doesn’t celebrate the New Year.

Well, perhaps it would be better to say he doesn’t follow the same calendar that everyone else does. He does pay attention to the changing of the seasons, recognizes that day when the sun makes its shortest climb and fall in the sky, when the night is longest, but that isn’t the way Geralt marks the years.

When one has lived as long as Geralt, time moves differently. Sometimes he thinks of weeks or months in the measure of how long it takes him to travel from one mountain to another, whether by Roach’s natural walking tempo or the slower one when Jaskier walks at his side. Time, for Jaskier, runs faster than his own feet.

Geralt associates the beginning of winter with the sense of goodbye, of loneliness, though he’d never, ever, admit that out loud. When the first frosts come he knows that he will turn toward the mountains, and soon Jaskier will go his own way toward the cities. The first days after they part are the hardest, when Geralt hears nothing but the whistle of the wind through bare trees and the rhythm of Roach’s hooves instead of a steady singing beat. He tells himself that it is hard to miss something so intangible, something that he wants but does not have, cannot hold.

When snow buries Kaer Morhen deep in white drifts, Geralt and his brothers gather around the hearthfires and share stories at night. Geralt tells of the monsters he’s killed since last he saw them, as they all do, but he thinks of the places he’s visited with Jaskier, the people who haven’t cursed at him, who haven’t spat at his feet. He thinks of Jaskier playing in a town square, people dancing. Sometimes Geralt looks at the faces of his brothers, and wonders what Jaskier would make of them. He imagines, in the comfortable silences, Jaskier’s voice and the gentle strumming of his lute.

When Eskel turns to him with laughing eyes and an old private joke Geralt thinks of Jaskier and the way he always tries his hardest to bring out the laughter in Geralt. How he remains cheerfully undeterred no matter how many times Geralt gives him an impassive face instead. Smiles don’t come easily to Geralt, but the warmth in his chest when he listens to Jaskier prattle on into the night, that lingers long after Jaskier has turned to his bedroll or his pillow and fills the air with quiet snoring.

He feels the eyes of his brothers on him, each year a little more, searching his face for something he can’t say. Eskel takes him aside, murmuring, “Just bring him, brother,” and Geralt pretends he doesn’t understand.

Each year the winter fades, and when the frost still gathers on the tips of the trees but the snows are beginning to shrink back, Geralt takes Roach back down the mountain. As they descend he sees the new shoots of unfurling green emerging from the hardened ground, pushing back the white drifts. It’s a ritual that repeats, and with each careful step downward he feels a growing sense of life, an anticipation that wasn’t there before.

And then one year, not any different than the others, Geralt sees Jaskier waiting for him on the road when he reaches the foot of the mountain. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are red with the early spring chill, and his smile is as wide as the sky. His lute is strapped across his back, and his traveling bags are at his feet, and he looks as though he has just been standing there all winter.

“I couldn’t wait,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the edges, and Geralt slides off Roach’s back fast enough to make her dance away from him.

He grips Jaskier by the shoulder and hauls him into an embrace that surprises both of them. Jaskier presses his cold face into Geralt’s neck and huffs warmly against his skin. He smells golden, like pale spring sunlight.

When Jaskier pulls back, a question on his face, Geralt kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until Jaskier melts like snow and twines his hands into Geralt’s hair, and the year begins again.


End file.
